February 2010

The Last Dragon is one of my all time favorite films. I know the entire film by heart. I will annoy the shit out of you if you watch it with me because I will quote the entire fucking thing. It is far from a perfect movie. In fact, there’s much in it that is downright awful. But it all somehow works. There’s a strange magic to this movie that makes you believe in the power of The Glow. Now there’s a remake in the works that I haven’t mentioned here at all. It does not impress me. In fact, I predict a big ol’ bag of fail. And I’ve come up with a list of reasons why I believe 2010’s The Last Dragon will suck and suck awful damn hard.

The Plot

In the original film, arcade owner Eddie Arkadian kidnaps top veejay Laura Charles to get her to play a music video starring Eddie’s girlfriend, Angela Viracco, on Laura’s weekly music video show and it’s up to Bruce Leroy to save her.

I’m not making that shit up.

If that sounds like something completely batshit insane, it is. Arkadian is quite mad and waaaaay over the top. And while it somehow works in this instance, there’s no possible way this plot would work in modern times. First of all, what cable channel plays music videos anymore? And where are all the arcades? And what the fuck is a veejay? Even if the remake is set in the 1980’s, this plot still doesn’t make any fucking sense.

It’s a Remake of an HomageThe Last Dragon is full of martial art movie cliches. It’s got the wise old master, a quest for knowledge, a seemingly unstoppable villain. It pays a lot of reverence to Bruce Lee and can almost be watched as an homage to Bruce. Now you may hear that the folks who want to remake the film want to sort of pay tribute to the original. Dur? You can’t pay tribute to an homage! That’s just fucking redundant.

Sam Jackson Does Not a Good Movie Make
A number of people are excited that Sam “Mother Fucking” Jackson will be playing the villain Sho’nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, the Baddest Mo Fo Low Down Around This Town. I’m sorry, but there’s only one Sho’nuff and sadly, Julius Carry is no longer with us. As good as he is at saying “Mother Fucker,” Sam Jackson just doesn’t cut it.

Part of it may be that it’s terribly difficult to see him as anyone other than Sam “Mother Fucking” Jackson. Julius Carry was a relatively unknown actor at the time so it was easy not to get distracted by his star power. Sam Jackson is Sam Jackson is Sam Jackson and I think that will hurt the movie greatly. For Sho’nuff to work, you kind of have to have someone who’s personality can get lost in the character. And while maybe there was a time that Sam Jackson was that person, I don’t think that time is now.

Besides, he really sucks in these cheesy genre flicks. Snakes on a Plane, he fucking phoned in. The Spirit, he went completely batshit crazy.

This Scene:

There’s no possible way they can recreate this scene to my satisfaction. Never. It just doesn’t work in a modern context and it barely works here. The only reason you don’t chuck the DVD out the window right now is because of Sho’nuff. He’s the biggest reason I love this movie so much. And the remake doesn’t have him. Boo!

No Actor is as Awkward as Taimak
Our star, Bruce Leroy, is played by 19-year-old martial artist Taimak who is horribly awkward throughout the entire movie. This is because he is a martial artist first, actor… um… maybe never. He is not good at acting. But again, it somehow works in this movie. It’s not artificial, it’s all real. All of his little uncomfortable quirks that make Laura fall in love with him, those are all real. You can’t recreate that. If you hire an actor, it’ll come off horribly forced. A martial artist might work, but there’s no guarantee. Somehow, all of Taimak’s faults worked for the character. It was one of those happy accidents. That’s not something you can recreate on purpose.

Today’s Pop Music Sucks
Okay, this might be a little old man of me and certainly the 80’s were no highlight in the history of American pop music. But seriously folks, today’s pop music is bullshit. Fucking autotune everywhere. Fucking sing-song-rapping. No good can come of this.

So there you go, six horribly biased reasons I don’t think this remake will be any good. If the producers want my money, which is doubtful if they read this, they should open it the same weekend as Airbender. I will pay actual money to see The Last Dragon opening day if it opens the same day as Airbender. I want to see Airbender go down in flames and if that means shelling out money to see a remake that I’m basically allergic to, I’ll fucking do it.

Seriously cute. So now the question is do you have babies just so you can dress them up as Ichigo and Shocker and pit them against each other to film your own live-action chibi Kamen Rider remake or… um… do you buy them for your friends who are having babies?

Angry Zen Minion Tyler Anderson sent along this trailer for Defendor in which Woody Harrelson takes on crime as a low-budget costumed vigilante. Okay, so someone stole the plot of Kick–Ass, put a prostitute in it, cast Casey Jones as a villain, and gave Woody a shit ton of cash to act like a complete fucking moron. Which is why this movie is gonna be fucking hysterical! Also, jar of wasps?! Best weapon evar! Between Kick–Ass and Defendor I hope these movies inspire a rash of homemade costumed vigilantes running around keeping our streets safe from…uh… fuck it, I just want to see weirdos running around in costumes outside of an anime con!

It’s no secret that I sort of have a love-hate relationship with Apple. I love much of what they do. I use Macs for most of my work. I prefer OSX to Windows. And yet, sometimes they really piss me the fuck off. The snarky “I’m a Hipster Elitist, I’m a PC” commercials, the eye-rolling promos for the iMaxi (AZM Ally Kurt Griffith has a nice write up about the thing that goes into a lot more detail than I did). Still, I’ve been a Mac user since the very first Macintosh computer hit the streets and I probably will be for a very long time.

Regarding Windows, I actually don’t have much of an opinion good or bad. I’ve got a box at home running XP that I use for 3D and After Effects that has held up pretty well. No complaints. Windows 7 looks like it might be useful, but until XP blows up, I’m sticking with what I’ve got. While I admit that I still get excited whenever Apple announces anything, I rarely pay attention to anything that Microsoft releases. So it surprised the shit out of me when I stumbled upon this little video.

Oh. Mah. Gawd.

Holy crap on a crutch?! Why the hell didn’t twitter explode when this thing was announced? This is awesome! It’s so elegant, functional, understated. Okay, so it’s got a shitty name, too. But what I love about this promo for Windows Phone 7 is that it emphasizes you, the user. As soon as you turn the thing on, your virtual social connections all pop up. You got your twithing, bookfaces, ichatty mcthingamadoobers right there, all the things that connect you to the people in your life. Whereas the iPad introduction was all about the device and how unbearably cool it is, this introduction is all about you. Whereas Apple proclaims upon high that their heavy flow maxIPAD will revolutionize revolutions, Microsoft lets the device speak for itself.

It’s almost like the two companies have flip-flopped. Apple used to be the elegant, understated, design centric company. Microsoft was the loud ass bull in the china shop. Now while it’s true that Apple’s design aesthetic remains a core consideration to all their products, they’ve started to bark a lot louder than they used to while Microsoft has kind of become more subdued. Weird.

Anyway, when comparing the intro of the iPad to the intro of the Windows Phone 7 Series in a pear tree (seriously, who comes up with these wonky ass names), I much prefer Microsoft’s presentation.

What do you do when your readers start to complain about dense continuity that spans too many books which makes it impossible for new readers to understand and makes buying single issues completely and utterly worthless? Why, you launch a new imprint, that’s what!

Marvel, the House of Idea, is launching the Astonishing line that promises to cater to new readers with light continuity featuring “epic” story lines that should satisfy new and old fans alike. Pardon me while I get a bit dizzy from my rolling eyes. The Astonishing books will be set in current Marvel continuity. The first two books out the gate are Astonishing X-Men with Warren Ellis and Kaare Andrews and Astonishing Spider-Man/Wolverine with Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert.

Sounds like the Ultimate line mixed with a little MAX for good measure. I don’t know about this. I mean, I understand the need to create titles that cater to new readers, that don’t depend on an encyclopedic background knowledge of the Marvel Universe just to figure out what the fuck you’re reading, that include more epicness. It just seems like over-saturation. There’s already the Ultimate line and the MAX line as well as the kiddy adventure line, the animated movies, the video games, and the movie movies. I guess the theory is that one more line couldn’t hurt. But this over saturation certainly doesn’t help. Given too many choices, I fear that readers will start shrinking their pull lists rather than expand. Or just wait for the trades.

And what are they doing to reach new readers? Besides comic geeks who read comic blogs and Marvel’s own blog, who’s gonna know that there’s this new line specifically targeted to new people? How are they reaching potential new readers? If you’re gonna whore, whore proper. Iron Man 2 are all over the place. That’s the perfect place to sneak in a little note or two about a new comic line, maybe a Marvel URL at the end to direct people to the new announcement. Seriously, who besides us who already give a shit about comics is gonna know about this new line?

Also, I’m kinda of done with Wolverine. He’s. Every. Fucking. Where. Stop it already. He’s not cool anymore. He’s overexposed. He’s no longer mysterious and cool, he’s just everywhere and boring as fuck. He’s so boring that they had to give him two crazy kids. Goddamn. Leave Wolverine the fuck alone. Put him in one book. ONE BOOK. And then maybe we’ll pay attention when he shows up somewhere else. For fuck’s sake, he’s got his own title, he’s in the Avengers, he’s in the X-Men, he’s got a television series, he’s got that shitty movie. Frankly, I’m Wolverined out.